The Presidential Town Hall-An On The Fly Report

Hi There. I am attempting to write this post live while the debate is actually happening and trying my best to write my impressions and responses to questions and answers as they are actually happening….so lets get to it….

The live presidential debate was a town hall style event, moderated my NBC’s Tom Brokaw, and in which I have to say seemed to have John McCain very at ease.

The economy of course was a central issue as Wall Street took another unheard of plunge today, and had MSNBC’s Jim Kramer suggest that at this time it might be prudent to take your money out of the market.

Tax cuts were talked about and deregulation was bandied about in reference to why this crisis has happened.

Both candidates felt that the economy would turn around, but the two candidates have different approaches and both seem to agree that it will be a slow process to turn the economy around.

Obama is able to put much of the budget deficits squarely on the Bush administration and is able to tie senator McCain to all of the votes for the Bush budgets.

Senator McCain’s response is aimed toward bipartisanship across the isle, in reference to getting us out of the budget crisis, but does not refute Obama’s claims about McCain’s votes for the Bush budgets in the past few years.

He also focused his attention toward alternative energy sources to lower our demand on foreign energy, so that our economy could be strengthened.

I have tended to hear from senator McCain a lot of wishful thinking as far as what America can accomplish in a very short time span ( and frankly, a four year term is a relatively short time span ) to try to get our children out of Iraq ( not that was mentioned here ), along with cutting the deficit, and shoring up the economy, while senator Obama was a bit more realistic as far as what programs would have to be cut in order to cut the deficit, rather than cuts across the board that would effect more than just a few programs.

I think senator McCain scores some points as far as his stance toward taxes and has just scored very big here, including stating his plans toward giving tax incentives to small business, but senator Obama was not able to respond to the statement due to time considerations.

Obama’s tax statement is simple, if you make $200,000 per year or less, you will not see a tax increase.

Climate change and the idea of green jobs were brought up and senator McCain’s answer had to do with nuclear power, while senator Obama’s response seemed to focus on generating new jobs, but did not just mention using nuclear power to order to do this. He also mentioned the oil consumption issue here in the US.

One question was asked should health care be treated as a commodity? Both senators Obama and McCain spoke of their different approaches to this issue.

Okay, I did the best I could with trying to follow this but I missed a lot of important points here so, I will end this with the question of America’s Foreign Policy and I have to say here that I feel that both candidates are very sincere with their separate answers to this question and of course their very different approaches and feelings toward American Foreign Policy.

While I feel that senator McCain is a bit naive about what he might be able to accomplish in his presidency, while I feel that senator Obama, while being accused of having no real experience in anything that would be close to foreign policy experience, just seems to have a better grasp of what needs to be done as far as the Iraq/ Afghanistan affair, and how that pertains to our present compliment of American Soldiers, and how that compliment could handle present and future problems abroad.

There was a bit more to this debate happening as I write this, but I think I got the best of the debate before it started to wind down, and I have to say that I honestly felt that both candidates have made valid points on several issues, and I will take what I also read from others tomorrow and do a follow up to this so stay tuned for some more on this debate.

The actual debate has just ended at about 10:35pm

And remember that there is one more debate on October 15th at Hofsta University, and please if you are still an undecided voter, than you need to see the last debate on the 15th.